Project to return farmland to wetlands

Published 3:00 am, Saturday, October 22, 2011

SAGINAW - 'Progress' once meant wrestling farmable land from the 40,000-acre wetlands expanse known as the Shiawassee Flats in Saginaw County.

Today, 'progress' means turning some of agricultural lands back into wetlands.

That's the basis of a project dedicated Friday within the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge, on the edge of the city of Saginaw.

The wetland restoration project is the first of its kind completed under President Barack Obama's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a five-year plan to return Great Lakes ecosystems to health.

The Shiawassee project, which began about one year ago, involved breaking the underground tiles installed long ago to drain the land and make it suitable for farming.

Now, low earthen berms will help keep moisture within the area. Water control structures - floodgates and pumps - will let the refuge add or remove water, as needed.

Nature will do the rest. DU biologist Russ Terry said wetland plant seeds can remain in soils for up to 100 years, awaiting only sufficient moisture and other environmental conditions to awaken them from their dormancy.

Soon, he said, smartweed, wild millet, foxtail and other wild foods will be growing, and wildlife is sure to notice.

"You name it," Terry said of wild birds, including waterfowl, "and they'll be here."

Shiawassee manager Steve Kahl said the restored parcel had been farmed, most recently for corn and soy beans, for at least 75 years.

Normally, no planting is necessary in a restoration. But Kahl said his staff planted some wild millet, smartgrass and even some leftover sunflowers this first year, to anchor the soil and keep invasive alien plants from stepping into the void.

Ducks, geese and many species of songbirds have already 'flocked' to it.

The field will be flooded each fall to the 6- to 18-inch depth waterfowl like best. It will remain inundated through spring migration time, when the water will be removed so that wetland plants - which only sprout in dewatered soil -- will propagate again.

Within the 9,620 acres of the federal refuge (adjacent to the state of Michigan's Shiawassee River State Game Area), the Tittabawassee, Flint, Shiawassee and Cass rivers merge to form the Saginaw River for its short journey to the Saginaw Bay at Bay City.

Refuge officials say as many as 40,000 ducks and 25,000 Canada geese can be visiting the refuge at any one time. They and other bird species are abundant enough that the refuge has been designated a Globally Important Bird Area. It's also a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network site.

Eleven federal agencies are Great Lakes Restoration Initiative partners, with the U.S. EPA doing the management. GLRI's five objectives are: clean-up of toxins and areas of concern; combating invasive species; promoting near-shore health through protection of watersheds from polluted runoff; wetland and habitat restoration; and outreach and education.

EPA has provided $255 million to 16 federal agencies and $163 million in grants for GLRI projects of $100,000 to $2 million. Universities have launched projects, as has the Michigan Department of Agriculture, and the Shiawassee project is one of 11 undertaken in Michigan by DU and partners.

Another, even bigger, Shiawassee project is in the works, said Kahl: a 940-acre field adjacent to the Shiawassee River will make a similar transformation from farmland to moist-soil wetland.

That, agreed the several dozen people gathered for the dedication Friday - including representatives of U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, U.S. Reps. Dave Camp and Dale Kildee, EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's Office of the Great Lakes -- is progress.